Description:
A vulnerability was reported in Red-M's Red-Alert wireless security/intrusion monitoring system. A remote user can cause the system to reboot, dropping any locally logged events. The system may also fail to correctly identify certain SSID strings.

Bruno Morisson reported that a remote user can connect to the target Red-Alert appliance and supply data that is longer than aproximately 1230 bytes to cause the appliance to reboot.

A demonstration exploit is provided:

$ perl -e 'print "a"x1230 . "\r\n\r\n"| nc <device ip> 80

When the device reboots, any logging information on the device will be lost, the report said.

It is also reported that the device uses IP address authentication. A remote user can connect to the device as an authenticated user if a valid administrator has recently authenticated from the same IP address.

It is also reported that a remote SSID that contains multiple space (0x20) characters will not be properly identified. Multiple space characters are reportedly detected by the device as a single space character.

The following notification timeline is provided:

October 3, 2003 - Vendor notified
January 8, 2004 - New firmware version tested
February 8, 2004 - Advisory released

Impact:
A remote user can cause the device to reboot, dropping any locally stored logging information.

A remote user may be able to gain authenticated access to the device if a valid administrator has authenticated from the same IP address.

The device will not properly identify certain SSID strings.

Solution:
The vendor has released a firmware update, available from Red-M and local partners.

Red-M Red-Alert Multiple Vulnerabilities
Product: RedAlert
Versions Affected: Tested with hardware version 2.7.5, software v3.1 build 24
Status: Fixed by vendor
Vendor URL: http://www.red-m.com
Advisory URL: http://genhex.org/releases/031003.txt
Author: Bruno Morisson <morisson@genhex.org>
Timeline:
3 October 2003 - Vendor contacted through local partner
8 January 2004 - New firmware version tested
8 February 2004 - Advisory released
Copyright notice:
This advisory, parts of it, or of the information herein
can be reproduced as long as proper credit is given to the author(s).
Product Description:
Red-Alert is a wireless (802.11b/Bluetooth) probe that monitors and
reports on wireless security threats.
Overview:
1) Any unauthenticated user can remotely reboot the Red-Alert probe, and
all locally logged events are lost.
2) The user authentication is bound to the source IP address
of the user authenticating, hence any other user behind the same address
will not be asked for authentication.
3) The probe will not correctly identify SSID strings that contain multiple
space (0x20) characters.
Details:
1) Any unauthenticated user can remotely reboot the Red-Alert
appliance through the webserver.
When a browser request is longer than aproximately 1230 bytes, the
appliance simply reboots. Consequently, all information is lost.
*Anything* sent to the device's tcp port 80 longer than aprox.
1230 bytes reboots it, whether it's a valid request or not.
This can be tested, for example, using perl and netcat:
$ perl -e 'print "a"x1230 . "\r\n\r\n"| nc <device ip> 80
The device reboots, and all locally logged information is lost.
2) The authentication of the probe administrator is bound to the user's
IP address. If multiple users are behind a nat or proxy, any of
those users can access the gui without restrictions after authentication.
The authentication does, in fact, expire after a few minutes of
inactivity, however, since the events popup page auto-refreshes itself
the session will potentially never expire.
3) If there are wireless networks detected by the probe with an SSID
with multiple space (0x20) characters, the probe fails to correctly
identify them. For example, if a network has the SSID " ",
the probe will detect it as " "(single space character). Any sequence
of multiple space characters in any substring of the SSID are
represented as one single space character.
Solution:
Contact Red-M or your local partner for a firmware update.
Disclaimer:
The information in this advisory is provided AS IS, with no
guarantee that its contents are correct, although the author
believes them to be so. The author takes no responsability for
the use or misuse of the information in this advisory or methods
described. Use at your own responsability.
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